The Case Against Italicizing “Foreign” Words

This is Dialek :: Dialect, a column by Khairani Barokka on language, culture, and power.

When Emily Dickinson implored us to “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant,” she wasn’t referring to an injunction to italicize words that people outside hegemonic cultures use on a regular basis, yet are deemed “other.” She was, we assume, referring to telling the truth in an uncommon way, encouraging us to create newness with language—and this newness, this uncommonness, is what is often implied with slanting words: italics.

In the past several years, working alongside fellow writers and translators who strive to operate with feminist, decolonial aesthetics (including my cohort of contributors to Sophie Collins’s edited volume Currently and Emotion: Translations, as well as Tilted Axis Press), I’ve become invested in the active ethos of not italicizing supposedly “foreign” words—words that supposedly aren’t used in the dominant culture. I’ve come to understand the practice of italicizing such words as a form of linguistic gatekeeping; a demarcation between which words are “exotic” or “not found in the English language,” and those that have a rightful place in the text: the non-italicized.

This magazine does not italicize non-English words for that reason, a policy I wish other English-language publications would emulate. So normalized is it to italicize the dominated “othered” that it takes people, myself included, many years if not decades to unlearn this trick.

Let’s use the example of food, a topic I’m always eager to discuss as a woman who is often hungry. At what point does a food word become worthy of inclusion in the English language, and according to whom? Who are the editors of which dictionaries? Which populations do they look at for usage frequency, considering more and more of the world (worryingly, for the state of linguistic diversity and cultural preservation in many regions) uses English regularly?

The practice of italicizing such words is a form of linguistic gatekeeping; a demarcation between “exotic” words and those that have a rightful place in the text.

“Masala” is a word found in the dictionary that comes with my laptop, but not “nasi goreng” (“fried rice” in Indonesian). Thanks to colonization, there is a large South Asian population that speaks English, there are many South Asian migrants in English-speaking countries, and curry is a pub staple, hence “masala” being unitalicized. Yet, what is the actual measure for whether a word belongs to a language—shouldn’t its usage in a sentence be measure enough? Parts of what is now Indonesia were colonized by the United Kingdom at some point, though of course the Dutch oppressed far more territories much longer. Yet, honestly, what is the colonization duration cut-off point, for a plundered region’s reparations—including linguistic? The right to, as problematic as using English always potentially is, make it one’s own, twist it into the slanted truth of the world that “othered” words represent?

Colonization and language hegemony has long included this in its mission statement: We’re going to impose English upon you—or Indonesian onto Asmat dialects in Papua, or abled languages onto autistic languages, or any other case in which a dominant language imposes itself upon another—but your own words, included in sentences that are otherwise in the dominant language, won’t be allowed into what is “proper.” The sentence itself may be proper, but the italicized word(s)—say, nasi goreng—is an “other.” If you are someone who has, like millions, eaten nasi goreng on the regular for years, this aspect of your life will be othered. And subconsciously, if you are one of those people and italicize nasi goreng, you are othering yourself, your own life, in language.

The act of italicizing nasi goreng brings actual mild revulsion, personally. Let’s try it: nasi goreng. Truly, yikes—what this primarily brings up for me is a question of assumed audience. Do I think everyone reading this is unfamiliar with nasi goreng? If so, I must have written it just for them—when of course I wouldn’t, as I’d love to reach the demographic of true nasi goreng stans, including many of the people closest to me. If the people you imagine in your mind are only those from dominant cultures other than your own, this is a matter of rewiring your brain to let you and your people be as profoundly indispensable and important and large as possible. You are (one would hope) not an ethnographer who treats humans and human cultures as though we are inhuman curios and collectibles.

As much as true cultural purity is a myth, and humans have been interlocking and influencing each other for many thousands of years, italicization persists in a way that attaches itself to such myths of purity. It’s curious that a slanting used to emphasize words’ importance (i.e., “I absolutely did not cook gado-gado. I cooked nasi goreng. Jesus Christ.”) is also used to render a distance between the italicized and unitalicized that doesn’t necessarily elevate the former—that, in fact, emphasizes the importance of the unitalicized to the dominant language in use.

Why on earth should we English speakers of myriad origins and life circumstances be expected to other ourselves?

Italicization is too often used to bolster a sense of superiority when it comes to the unitalicized, and to reinforce the thick patina of whiteness or other cultural dominance. This is too often the case for English, even, for instance, in various countries where English is an official language and a majority of people are Black or Asian (Nigeria, Singapore, et al.). Why on earth should we English speakers of myriad origins and life circumstances be expected to other ourselves?

As much as italicizing may be used to maintain power imbalances, however, it can also dismantle them. I’m referring here to italicization used in fascinating ways in creative writing that, for instance, imply different speakers, or a dream state, or whatever the imagination needs to conjure—that may turn the tables on what is meant to be italicized and what is not, and may italicize the dominant culture(s) deliberately. I’m also not opposed to the italicization deemed standard in, for instance, various strands of scientific writing, such as when writing species’ scientific names—though of course the naming of animals scientifically is part of colonial, Western understandings of animal “discovery” timelines. Nor am I discussing what may well be many other specific modifications of language use in which italicization plays a part, in which power may be delineated differently.

It wouldn’t hurt, however, for anyone using forms of italicization in a highly specific way to examine the antecedents of these standards; to take a beat and sit with what exactly is meant, really meant, by italicizing a word in a specific context, including those not mentioned here. What it means in terms of power: who deserves it, who defines it, who has more or less of it. And when you do, feel free to let me know what you think. I’m serious.

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